First Fantasy: Mana Force Screenshot Thread

u/Duke "Tape" Eiyeron March 26, 2015, 03:10:33 PM

Yeah, more power ,more pretty things, I like this philosophy!

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 26, 2015, 03:15:00 PM

Indeed. The main issue is if the calc lacks parser hooks, then we cannot use real() syntax. Asm(prgmNAME) syntax is way slower. It's possible that it would be even slower than just using ASCII art if the CE VAT system works the same way as on the monochrome models. There will be speed loss in certain areas, while there will be considerable ones in others.

u/Snektron March 26, 2015, 04:08:49 PM

Omg i really want an emulator to help search for these hooks

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 26, 2015, 04:49:51 PM

The emulator will most likely not be accurate, though. TI-Smartview apparently could run tr1p1ea's original program while a real calc couldn't. Of course stuff like jsTIfied will most likely emulate the calc fine, though.

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 28, 2015, 06:58:59 AM

New magic spell!

Psy basically replaces the Evil spell. It's gonna be weaker, but it will absorb HP!

The magic animation remains the same, other than the colors. The required MP changes as well, but that's the case of every game spell anyway.

u/Duke "Tape" Eiyeron March 28, 2015, 07:07:37 AM

To avoid useless magic? Life stealing spells are always useful!

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 28, 2015, 07:45:50 AM

Indeed. In the original game, every single spell is just a stronger version of the others, so basically as soon as you got a stronger one, then everything else was useless.

I was also thinking about making one of the dungeons so that using regular attacks is impossible or causing no damage, like the Magic Tower in Final Fantasy VI. I could either do it with the Magic Tower in my game, but it has 99 floors so it would be impossible to clear without running out of MP (and items) halfway through unless you grind for a long while to stock up on walnuts and ethers before entering. I might just make it so that in that tower, attacks cause half damage to every enemy and have the 7th dungeon disabling regular attacks instead.

Also, another update in the game, this time in the main menu. Now the text below the navigation will only appear once you stop pressing keys, so if you need to navigate fast between menus, it will be much faster:

Basically, notice how in the screenshot above, menu content won't refresh as long as you keep pressing arrow keys. Just like Illusiat 13 item descriptions.

Last Edit: March 28, 2015, 07:50:14 AM by DJ Omnimaga

u/CKH4 March 28, 2015, 02:19:03 PM

That is a nice feature, it seems helpful for those who will try to play the game through as quickly as possible. Also I like that magic spell up there. If you limit the power of certain attacks on some stages you should probably put some way for us to know which ones are worse ( unless its part of the challenge ). How do you regain mp in this game?

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 28, 2015, 03:16:52 PM

Thanks and yeah the limiting of certain powers via elemental protections is meant to add some strategy to the game so for example a certain character class will be better in specific situations, rather than becoming useless immediately after getting its successor. Unlike Mana Force 2 magic spells, you cannot level up your classes nor your magic spells in Mana Force/First Fantasy: Mana Force.

As for knowing which spell is better against an enemy, that will be part of the challenge to be honest. In old RPGs you really had to use common sense (eg if you were in a Fire dungeon it was obvious that fire magic would fail) or trial and error.

As for MP, you need to either use walnut or ether items to restore it. Leveling up also restores your HP/MP to maximum.

As for updates, I fixed a bug with saving that caused the menu to exit immediately afterward and another issue with exporting the battle file from SourceCoder that caused the final battle background to not be parsed correctly. There was also a bug when exiting battles that got introduced by the removal of lbl and gotos and caused the character to be drawn off screen on battle exit.

EDIT: Another bug that caused the random encounter rate to be twice higher than intended was fixed.

Last Edit: March 28, 2015, 03:29:21 PM by DJ Omnimaga

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 29, 2015, 04:08:13 AM

Village of Hope before the final dungeon can be accessed:

Village of Hope when c is about to hit the fan:

Yay for colors.

And the flickering in the village has been fixed. I am also considering replacing one of the early magic spell with Bio or Poison. It would look like Ice but green. I might also allow some enemies to use it. Another possibility was to allow 1 boss to use the energy absorb spell. There probably won't be an item nor a spell to heal poison, to add to the challenge, but it's not like poison will cause significant amounts of damage. I'll see, though.

Last Edit: March 29, 2015, 04:12:10 AM by DJ Omnimaga